Karabinus, William

WA6RAM

N0QMY

WILLIAM DEAN KARABINUS was born in Cleveland, Ohio, September 3, 1933, and moved to Van Nuys, California, in 1945, with his parents, Rose and Bill Karabinus. He graduated from Van Nuys High School Class of 1952. After graduation Bill went into partnership with his father, they owned/operated Pasadena Paint and Body Works from 1953 to 1986. Bill grew interested in amateur radio spending time being Elmer’d by Chuck Ansoms WB6YCT / N0KIX in Chuck’s garage ham station in the mid and late 60’s, helping Chuck with phone patch duties. Inspired by these activities Bill studied and became a licensed amateur WA6RAM and joined Navy-Marine Corps MARS receiving call sign N0QMY. In June 1974 Bill met Dee (Doris) also a ham operator, they married on May 29^th, 1975. At the time they were believed to be the first Navy-Marine Corps MARS members to meet and marry. Bill and Dee spent many hours on both radio/RTTY and telephone receiving and delivering third party message traffic on the MARS networks. They semi-retired in 1988. Bill also served as the Region 5 Net Operations Manager and was active in VHF ham operations. Later he served as ASE Fifteen, Assistant to the Director for Interoperability (Liaison for Army and Air Force MARS). He and Dee spent lots of time in the old West LA and Orange County Henry stores.

Bill passed away November 17, 2004, in Lake Hughes, California. He is survived by Dee, his wife of 30 years; his son, William D. Karabinus, Jr., and granddaughter, Alisha Karabinus, both of Little Rock, Arkansas; stepdaughters, Ruth Tabarez (Steve) and his son, Mark, of Oxnard, California and Esther Hebbard (Doug) and their daughters, Bridget and Meghan, of Lake Villa, Illinois.